LONDON, UK. — 28/08/2015— AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) continues to push the boundaries of graphics card design, today announcing its category-creating AMD Radeon™ R9 Nano, the fastest Mini ITX graphics card ever, to enable 4K gaming in the living room through ultra-quiet, ultra-compact PC designs. First previewed to gamers around the world during the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles in June 2015, the AMD Radeon R9 Nano graphics card is based on the graphics chip codenamed “Fiji”, and is the third “Fiji”-based product to launch this summer alongside the AMD Radeon™ R9 Fury and R9 Fury X graphics cards. The AMD Radeon™ R9 Fury graphics family, based on the “Fiji” chip, marks a turning point in PC gaming with the implementation of High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) to deliver extreme energy efficiency and performance for ultra-high resolutions, unparalleled VR experiences, smoother gameplay, with the Radeon R9 Nano revolutionizing form-factors for enthusiasts everywhere.

With 30 percent more performance and 30 percent lower power than the previous generation AMD Radeon™ R9 290X card, the 175W AMD Radeon R9 Nano is the world’s most power efficient Mini ITX enthusiast graphics card. The six-inch long, air-cooled board represents a new class of graphics card, enabling gamers, PC modders, and system integrators to build compact, unique, ultra-small form factors that have never before been possible, opening the door to new, sleek PC designs that are no bigger than a home DVR or videogame console, and look every bit in place beside them.

“With the Radeon™ R9 Nano graphics card, AMD is enabling 4K class gaming in your living room in an exceptionally quiet, ultra-small design built to excel in today’s games and on the latest APIs like DirectX® 12 and Vulkan™. There simply is nothing else like it,” said Matt Skynner, corporate VP and general manager, Product, Computing and Graphics Business Unit at AMD. “Our Radeon™ graphics line-up is ushering in a new era of PC gaming delivering remarkable performance, unmatched GPU designs and groundbreaking technologies. Today is a revolutionary moment for PC gaming, and we are proud to add this distinct product to our well-rounded AMD Radeon R9 graphics lineup.”

The AMD Radeon R9 line of graphics cards offers a spectrum of products ranging in price from $199 – $649 SEP[iv]. Delivering stunningly powerful graphics for unparalleled 4K gaming experiences in their class, the AMD Radeon R9 Series meets virtually every need and budget for anyone who demands a premium gaming experience.

While i applaud AMD’s innovation, their developement of the HBM and it’s introduction even if it’s just the first generation officially and has it’s own caveats currently (4gb of ram…. 500mhz operating frequency which is still more than sufficient mostly)… there are some very troubling issues that seem like MASSIVE failure’s on their part…. and IMO border on being potential legal issues depending on someone wants to take it that far.

1st: One of the major things AMD has plastered on their product is 4K and being that it’s for that, the number one product for it…. however in all the spec lists, everywhere i look and all the reviews i’ve seen of the fury and fury x as well as what’s stated about fury nano…. is that the one thing that 4k truly needs, is HDMI 2.0, otherwise what’s the point, and it’s a critical feature/function/requirement that these product lack. HDMI 1.4 can indeed do 4k.. but it’s limited to 30hz and there are a few other restrictions that go with it. This is a problem, a serious issue, unless amd outright wants to take a leap back in time and utter a very stupid statement made years ago that “30fps is good enough, no one can see anything higher”….

All this could be resolved if they provided a DP ~> HDMI 2.0 adapter perhaps, but i don’t think that would work.

2nd: While a lot of people are busy picking their jaw off the ground due to the pricing of the nano… i can honestly say that i wasn’t expecting the product or price… but seeing the specs, i understand the price… so really i wasn’t expecting the product they have. I was expecting something in the range of 25% reduction in overall capabilities of the unit/specs for the nano… not a full blown fury with ultra tweaked clocks to maximum efficiency and power/heat reduction. So it completely makes sense for a 6 inch itty bitty tiny card with such a big amount power behind it to cast as much as the full fledge fury x… IT costs a pretty penny to shrink things like that down that much.

3rd: I feel there is a 4th product needed, or is missing, or clearly hasn’t been announced hopefully. AMD needs a fury that is in line with the 390’s they launched and to be able to compete directly in the same value range as the 970’s while still kicking ass essentially. So i can only hope that they are further binning a bunch of chips that don’t quite meet the vanilla fury’s requirements and are going to make an attempt at providing those chips as a cheaper variant, perhaps used for mobile solutions at very low clocks and low voltage, or more hopefully as entry level fury. What i personally was looking for was something in the $300 give or take range, that would be a noticeable improvement over a r9 285, mostly due to the extra vram and better design/more advance…. or at least something that a user of a 6950/7950 or 280x would clearly see as the next best thing to jump on rather than making what insignificant change would be between a 280x and a 380x.

4: Related to point 3, is that if they really wanted to hit ITX hard, they really actually needed a low profile model, something under the pci-ex 2.0 spec 150watt limit that would use either no external power OR a 6 pin connect, that lets say, had only 2GB of HBM ram @ 2048bit (i’m sure there are a bundle of their chips that don’t meet the full capacity due to issues perhaps), though i’m not sure if this is possible, but i know plenty of people that would likely jump on something like that for the right price, hopefully something under $175 even.

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